Wow. That is a well respected journal, quoting well known pioneers in the field, the math is correct as far as I can remember, and the rest looks right. What the author is doing is pointing out the pitfalls of believing field lines are real objects, instead of following the math which describes only a vector field. The arguments are cogent and convincing.

catmoon wrote:Wow. That is a well respected journal, quoting well known pioneers in the field, the math is correct as far as I can remember, and the rest looks right. What the author is doing is pointing out the pitfalls of believing field lines are real objects, instead of following the math which describes only a vector field. The arguments are cogent and convincing.

Thanks much Will, I really enjoyed reading that.

Kindly explain 1) the difference (in the layest of lay terms) between 'field lines' and 'vector field' and 2) the implications therefrom.

Well, they are different models of electric fields, and students are usually taught to use them both freely.

A vector field is a field of values assigned to a space. Each point in the space has a vector associated with it that describes the field at that point. A vector is a just a numerical value with a direction, and is usually represented by an arrow whose length represents the numerical part. So if you know the equation of an electric field, you know the value and direction of the field at each point, because you can calculate all the vectors.

Field lines are different because in that representation, the lines are discrete objects while a vector field is continuous. Further, field lines may give a nice sense of the shape of a field, but the are prone to certain misinterpretations. The guy in the paper points out that fields cannot explosively reconnect as is thought to happen in solar flares - the lines just don't exist in that way. They hardly exist at all, really. People do most calculations using the vector model and mostly use field lines as a visualization aid.

Another prob pops up when perfectly reasonable vector fields are modelled as field lines. Sometimes the vector model leads to open - ended field lines, which are not supposed to exist. However, such vector models lead to perfectly good explanations of observed reality when models are run on computers. So it looks like the vector model is the gold standard.

Besides all of which, there are no field lines, one should really speak of field surfaces. Oh and this all applies to magnetic fields as well, with perhaps a few oddities arising from the lack of magnetic monopoles.

The idea of field lines arose from the old experiment where you put a magnet on a table, place a sheet of paper over the magnet and then sprinkle iron filings on it. This dramatic demonstration gave every body the idea that the lines are something real. But the exact location of the lines depends entirely on things like the composition of the filings, their size and how much you shake the paper.

Will wrote:Thank you Catmoon; but I do lament dropping into college so briefly

Are there really distinct electric versus magnetic fields? Unless you mean the natural lodestone field versus one induced by a current?

The simplest way to look at it is, yes, there are. When you unload the laundry, and your socks stick to your sweater, your are feeling the stickiness of electrostatic attraction. When you peel a magnet off the fridge, yor are feeling the stickiness of magnetic attraction.

Things get a bit trickier when things start moving. Accelerating charges give rise to magnetic fields and accelerating magnets give rise to electric fields, so they are intimately interactive. In free space, the collapse of an electric field gives rise to a magnetic field, which in turn collapses and gives rise to a new electric field. These effects propagate rapidly, and depending on the frequency, are called light, radio, microwaves, X rays, gamma radiation and so on. All are propagating electromagnetic fields, perfectly described by Maxwell's equations so long as you stay clear of quantum effects.

I do not have the education to know whether the standard model or this differing Plasma cosmology is closest to the truth. But when the mainstream astronomer begins & ends his refutation with amateur psychology & questioning the Plasma Cosmologists motives, I devalue his remarks a lot.

As far as I can tell, the plasma cosmology people are basing all of their objections on a (probably unconscious) desire to be the Justified Iconoclast, latching on with their friends to a Truth that the mainstream refuses to see.

A bodhisattva does not become weary of evil beings nor does he commit the error of bringing forth thoughts inclined to reject them and cast them aside. Avatamsaka Sutra, ch. 25

Well we don't know if there is some hidden agenda here, if there is someone advancing some mystic revelation in the guise of science, but it really doesn't look like it. One does not just walk into an IEEE journal and post there.

What I see, is someone questioning the existing paradigm in a legitimate way. Cosmology to date has been largely concerned with gravity and the mass of the universe, and has more or less assumed that electromagnetic effects cancel out on the large scale. There is also a tendency to draw pretty dubious conclusions from the field line model, which is a pretty rough and ready rule of thumb rather than a rigorously developed theory.

Now, if he is right, this is going to invalidate the work of a number of people, and they are going to get very upset about that, and I think we can see that happening. It's getting very interesting.

For instance what if the dark energy everyone is so worried about turns out be a large scale electromagnetic effect? What if the universe at large is not electrically homogenous, what if there are large currents circulating in it? And how could they affect visible matter? There is certainly a lot of plasma in the universe (most of it actually) and that stuff is reactive to electric and magnetic fields.

Scientists went from thinking the human world was the center of the universe, to the idea that our solar system existed in a vast universe that was contained in a great crystal bubble that kept all the matter inside. After that theory faded, they concluded arbitrarily that the universe begins with a single "bang" in the middle and either expands until it dissipates into nothing, or it contracts again only to bang once more.

It's encouraging and hopeful that something else, something based on plasma is being taken seriously in their community. Indeed, what if a universal cluster begins and ends with a single plasma body? Like a glob of plasma that further transmutes into new, birthing universes. As Buddhists, we are aware of the fact that the entire cosmos does not fully dissipate nor generate itself in an intrinsically empty vacuum. It is beginningless and endless.

Will wrote:Do gravity, Relativity and empty space provide a true picture of cosmology?

At the bottom of things, "gravity, relativity, and empty space" don't provide anything. Scientists can say, "we observe gravity, relativity, and empty space, but... we don't really know why they work they way they do or where it comes from to begin with..." And they don't know. They're just three words that refer to what we observe and can theorize about. Space being the most obscure, relativity slightly less so, and gravity being wildly guessed at based on theories concerning the previous two combined...